Stuff you missed while waiting for a spring that never happened

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
06/08/2014 06:36:09 AM EDT

By Michael Goldman

So, Dracula was right. Seems blood from young mice had a rejuvenating effect on the muscle and brains of older mice while blood from older mice had the opposite effect on younger mice, aging and dulling their senses.

What does this mean for humans?

As far as I can tell, absolutely nothing, but it doesn't make it any less interesting.

And speaking of young and old, how old is too old to be president?

According to a newly released poll from the Pew Research Center, it depends on who appears to be your political party's apparent nominee to be president.

In 2008 and 1996, for example, years when the two Republican nominees were John McCain and Robert Dole, both of whom fell on the older side of the age spectrum, Republicans were more likely to support older candidates.

In 2014, it's the Democrats who think an older candidate might be just what the nation needs in 2016, given that their most likely nominee will be 69-year-old Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, while supporting older candidates appears to be at least a possibility in both parties, supporting an atheist appears to be an impossibility for Democrats and Republicans alike.

Yet a second Pew poll found more voters likely to support a presidential candidate who smoked marijuana, or stepped out on his spouse, than one who said they simply didn't believe in God.

What makes this interesting is at the same time the number of Americans who call themselves either agnostic or atheist has never been higher. Go figure.

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Meanwhile, some statistics to think about...

Between them, the United States and England had 8,885 murders by guns in 2012. England had 30 of them while the U.S. had 8,855. And these are only the murder-by-gun fatalities. They do not include the gun deaths by suicide.

Ready? Number of gun suicides in the U.S. in 2011? 19,766. Number of gun suicides in England in 2011? 84.

Still think the availability of guns doesn't matter?

This is why House Speaker Bob DeLeo deserves real plaudits for trying to deal with the number of available guns floating around our state.

Speaking of plaudits, cheers to the majority of Supreme Court justices who wisely and compassionately ruled that no state can any longer rely solely on a fixed IQ score to decide the intellectual competency of those who kill.

Now, if a majority of these justices simply would ban the death penalty altogether, we could join the rest of the civilized world in ending the practice forever.

Is it just me or are you tired of the President Obama-haters who are so pathologically unable to give the president and the first lady credit for anything. They have taken to opposing healthy and nutritious school lunches in favor of advocating for fattening, unhealthy alternatives just so they can say they oppose the Obamas on everything?

And speaking of opposing anything with the taint of Obama on it, the latest victim of this mindless gamesmanship is the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

For years a bi-partisan success, recently it's become the hard-right's new Benghazi, with one Florida Republican state representative going so far as to claim the new educational standards were a ploy to make Florida children gay.

And don't get me started on Bowe Bergdahl.

In a classic heads-I-win-tails-you-lose scenario, Obama was pummeled by the far right for years for not doing more to get this Afghanistan prisoner of war back home, and now is being pummeled by the same groups for allegedly paying too much to get this less-than-heroic soldier back home.

Is it any wonder the president is already talking fondly about leaving the White House and the madness of Washington in just a little more than two years?

Maybe this will put a smile on the president's face.

Seems a kick-starter campaign headed by longtime Reading Rainbow host LeVar Burton exceeded its original fundraising goals by leaps and bounds, which means thousands of future children will enjoy the wonder of reading.

Can we all at agree, liberals and conservatives both, that this is a good thing?

Michael Goldman is a paid political consultant for Democratic candidates and president of Goldman Associates in Boston.

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